The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Zylo]
and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.

New Worlds is described as a MUD that emphasizes roleplaying,non-traditional features, and has a large playerbase. Consequently,the MUD aspects that it de-emphasizes are global chat, questing, andcombat.

To facilitate roleplay, the tasks in the MUD require a greater degreeof socialization. As a new player, to advance in the Immigrant(newbie) guild, you're required to write a background story for yourcharacter. Then you must ask one of a handful of immigrant guides toread your story and approve it. When encountering another player, youdon't even see their name. You only see their race and basicdescription. You must join a conversation and introduce yourself.Another requirement to advance is to pester veterans to deliver guildtoken lectures to you.

The administrators have purposefully crafted this system to galvanizeyou to join social circles early. However, the structure of the gamedoesn't encourage veterans to mentor you. For each social task, theonus is on you as the new player to take the initiative, and sink orswim on your own ventures.

Requiring a newbie to introduce himself to veterans is an unnecessarytask. The recognition system should be structured such that veteransrecognize the names of newbies, but newbies don't recognize eachother. That way, veterans can say, 'Welcome Gandalf, what type ofadventure do you seek in our land?' The way that it is now, a newbiemust struggle to find a hangout where he can observe a conversationand find a reason to join. After a newbie has joined a guild, then hisname should be removed from the Everyone Recognizes Him list, so thatthe nice element of unfamiliarity can be preserved.

One of the biggest disappointments about New Worlds is that there areonly a handful of sparse, simple areas for newbies to practice theirskills and advance. Furthermore, it takes too much effort to progressfrom a fresh Immigrant to Serfdom (when you can join a guild andfinally have some decent combat abilities). The 10 Immigrant levelsrequire a great deal of patient slaying of the same few enemies.

Compounding this is another major drawback of New Worlds, namely MovePoints. To restrict players from using macros to quickly sprintbetween towns, the MUD tracks each player's Move Points. At Serfdom,you can only move about 40-50 rooms before you exhaust your MovePoints. You are then required to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Nevertheless, some of the players on there have written wonderfulbackgrounds. Sometimes players will approach you because they share arace or theme with your background story, and try to start a roleplaybased on it. With name introduction, having someone you already knowintroduce you to a new player can be fun. I wish that more MUDs hadthese features.

I have mixed feelings about the guild token talks. On one hand, it'sa good way to meet people of your prospective guild, and to facilitateyour decision about whether that's the correct guild for you. Inother MUDs, new players often switch around a few guilds, because thewritten description didn't give them insight about the type ofcommunity with which they would be dealing. Sometimes your tokenlecturer will tell you about the personality types that you can expectto meet in that guild, such as the ambitious, the philosophical, thecomical, the dedicated, etc. On the other hand, the talks are toolong. By the time that a well-covered talk is completed, both thelecturers and the recipients are weary. Also, some veterans don'texactly jump at the opportunity to do a token talk -- not because theydon't like the idea of giving a hand to a newbie, but because of thetime commitment involved. I feel that the administrators should bemore specific about narrowing the topics that are covered in talk,such that all talks become less than 25 minutes.

The guild application process can be challenging. I have mixedfeelings about this process too. On the one hand, I like the fact thatnot just anybody can join your guild. On the other hand, as a newbie,it's difficult to offer something to distinguish yourself from crowd.The process is unclear with regard to what extent it's personal andto what extent it's 'business'. Like an uncomfortable jobinterview, you feel pressured to be likable yet dedicated. Certainindividuals don't bother with likability, and they are not encouragedbecause they seem dull or self-centered. Other individuals don't actlike they take the guild and roleplay seriously, and they are givensharp nudges to stick to the script. In the end, I feel that NewWorlds would be better served by a system that encouraged the formalmentoring of Serfs by a member or two of their prospective guild. Whensomeone is giving you a Welcome tour of the land, you don't feel likeyou have the burden of proving your qualification. It would be morelike your natual roleplay personality would come out during the courseof the tour.

It was unfortunate for me that the Assistant Guild Master who wasinformally given charge of my induction happened to request a responsefrom me via the post office, and then he didn't check his mail forthree real-life days. I even tried to remind him to check his mail,but he didn't take the hint. I think that was a uncommon occurence,though.

Other than the difficulties of finding your social niche, most of theroleplaying and conversation on New Worlds is far above most MUDs. NewWorlds is fortunate to have many thoughtful, creative players.

The only caveat I have about roleplaying is that as an Immigrant, Ididn't know where the clothing shop was. Hence, I was wearingchainmail without clothing. Quite a few of the female playersresponded with emotes such as 'averts her eyes', 'blushes', oreven crude innuendos. It's not that I was trying to roleplay publicnudity. It's just that I was new. In addition, I saw this happen toother males who logged in without wearing clothes. There was a pointwhere I wanted to grumble, 'Aren't any of you women heterosexual?Haven't you seen male nudity before? I know that in real life,you're over 18.' Well, when you have several roleplayingconversations with someone, you can get an idea of whether they're ateenager or not. Anyway, there should be an RP rule that Immigrantsare immune to accusations of nudity. Either that, or provide allImmigrants with a full set of clothes.

Other than that, though, the roleplaying on New Worlds can really bea joy sometimes. It's the best RP MUD that I've ever played, andI've been around the block. I was even the Archwizard of Quests on atotally quest-based MUD.

New Worlds's large playerbase is nice. It's always cheering to seeactive examples of all of a MUD's classes and races. The large groupprovides a sense of diversity -- a sense that you can find like-mindedindividuals within the greater whole. Unfortunately, sometimes NewWorlds awards experience simply for being online. New Worlds is alsovery tolerant of idling. As a result, 20%+ of the current playersonline are usually idle. They are merely their for their 'free'experience, and to listen to a few channels. This is annoying, becauseit gives you a false sense of what's going on, as well as the factthat it rewards players who have real-life lifestyles that allow themto idle on a MUD for 8 hours a day. However, most of the players arequite friendly, when they're around. New Worlds has a nice sense ofcommunity.

As for the non-social aspects of the MUD, New Worlds favors partiesthat go out exploring and hunting. It doesn't particularly emphasizequests, which is reasonable, considering that quests are usually doneindividually or in very small groups, whereas New Worlds wants to be asocial MUD.

To balance out the absence of quests, though, New Worlds offers bothownership and events. Ownership is primarily handled through its ownguild, the Merchants Guild. By being a Merchant, or interacting withone, you can own wardrobes, ships, commodities, houses, siege engines,etc. This is an area in which New Worlds is ahead of the curve.

One of the most exciting features of New Worlds is admin-sponsoredevents, such as monster invasions or guild wars. For players that arerelatively new to the MUD, these can be rivetting. They are also verywell-organized and quite creative. For veteran players, though,sometimes they lose their edge. 'Eh, another invasion, huh'. Yetthat's always the problem with old-timers on any MUD -- they developa 'seen it all' sense of world-weariness.

In conclusion, New World gives an admirable effort at aroleplaying-focused MUD of the 2000 decade. I hope that New Worldssurvives the current migration of MUD players to graphical MMORPGs.None of the current MMORPGs come close to capturing the magic of arich roleplaying environment like New Worlds. New Worlds definitelyneeds some major tweaks to how it handles newbies. However, it'sconstantly improving.